


what are you doin'...

by lulabo



Category: Superstore (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 10:48:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13052460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lulabo/pseuds/lulabo
Summary: Every day had been the same. It's easier and harder now that they're not. Amy reflects (and thinks bad thoughts about a certain Beatle).





	what are you doin'...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sandyk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sandyk/gifts).



> Canon-compliant up to a point--let's say Kelly can still work at Cloud 9, but she doesn't work in this story.

The break room smells like Jerusha’s gingerbread.

“It reminds me of my grandma’s foot cream,” Cheyenne whispers. “She orders it special from a lady in Canada who makes beauty products in her basement.”

“It somehow manages to be both crumbly _and_  brittle,” Garrett adds. “It hurts my hands.”

They’ve all given up trying to construct anything remotely house-like with the stuff; most of the assembled associates are trying to get it to adhere into something resembling anything. It’s not working.

“It was sweet of her to have Glenn bring it in,” Jonah says.

Amy wants to flick at him one of the small globs she’s managed form with a glue made out of royal icing and rubbing alcohol. Because adults need creative playtime, she wants to say. Because what any of us wants in the course of a ten hour shift mid-holiday rush is to craft a cookie house we’ll only throw away the minute we escape this hellhole. She tamps the instinct down; if she’s feeling crazy-irritated at the moment, it’s maybe only 9% Jonah’s fault. The other 91% or so is the barrage of holiday cheer that’s invaded the store.

Garrett slaps the cookie-brittle dust from his hands. “If you’ll excuse me, as it is the top of the hour, I have to announce the Cloud 9 Countdown to Christmas.” He sighs. “Six more days of heavenly savings, and yes, I am doing a shot every time I have to say it.” He pushes away from the table, muttering, “This store’s gonna owe me a new liver by New Year’s.”

Amy feels her lip curl reflexively. Top of the hour also means another rotation of “Wonderful Christmastime” on the music feed from corporate. Paul McCartney might be a humanitarian, or whatever, but if there are cosmic scales weighing every good thing he’s ever done against the number of times he’s inflicted “Wonderful Christmastime” on retail employees, even by proxy, he’s going to hell for sure. Amy doesn’t get too fussed about Christmas as a holiday in general, but retail creep means she’s had her fill of the whole production of it pretty much by December second. But the break’s over, so she leads the way back to the floor.

“So, Amy,” Cheyenne says, “did you get someone good for Secret Santa?”

“Wrong!”

(Dina must lie in wait for these moments, Amy thinks. Just stands next to an end cap, knowing she’s out of eyeline, biding her time until someone says something or does something and she can just, like, _pop ou_ t. She doesn’t ask, because she knows Dina will tell her, and she’d rather just submit than think too hard about what that means Dina does with her time in and out of the store.)

Dina’s already in step beside them as she says this. “We’re not doing Secret Santa this year, Cheyenne.”

“Sorry—Secret Holiday Gift Exchange,” Cheyenne says. “Er, no, Holiday Secret Gift Exchange… thingie.”

“It’s a Non-secular Winter Gift Exchange without reference to any major religion or holiday occurrence,” Dina says. “It’s not hard to remember.” She pauses. “And I swear to God if the person who pulled my name gets me something from this store I will bounce it off their idiot skull so fast—”

Amy veers off-course to to the baby section, not wanting to hear the rest of Dina’s threat. Jonah’s followed at a few steps behind them, and he follows Amy as if by rote. He hovers at the end of the aisle near the fancy bottle sanitizing machines, pretending to square off the corners and line things up along the edge of the shelf.

“I don’t know why people need bottle sanitizers when they can just boil water,” he says.

It’s on the tip of her tongue to remark that FEMA living has really changed his perspective on what’s necessary in life, but it seems cruelly pointed. And as much as Jonah can hold forth on literally any subject longer than anyone else she knows, he’d been more reticent to talk about that particular part of his life than she’d expected. He’d come back to work skinnier, looking tired all the time. And he talks enough about living with Garrett now that she knows his summer in the trailer is enough of a soft spot not to poke at it. Jonah’s one of the few people who hasn’t been asking her solicitously about her Christmas plans and how she’s coping, too. If they can’t relate, exactly, they can at least respectfully reciprocate the not-asking. So instead of reminding him that convincing people to buy things they don’t need is a substantial part of their job, she wonders allowed if Jerusha knows what gingerbread is really supposed to taste like.

“I don’t think her gingerbread even has ginger in it,” Jonah says.

“Definitely lacking in festive non-secular spices,” Amy agrees.

Jonah shuffles his feet a bit. “I feel kinda bad about the whole non-secular thing,” he says.

She glances at him. “Why would _you_  feel bad?” she says.

“Because I’m the one who, you know, made a big deal out of it,” he says. “I should have kept my mouth shut.”

Amy smothers a smile. “Should have,” she starts.

“Couldn’t have?” he finishes.

She holds up a hand. “I didn’t say it,” she says. “And besides, you weren’t the one who made a big deal. You just pointed out not everybody celebrates the Santa-centric holiday. Glenn was the one who made it a _thing_.”

“I guess,” he says. “I wouldn’t have cared about it being Secret Santa, really.”

“Glenn was just trying to be sensitive to your ‘cultural needs.’”

“It sounded so creepy when he said that,” Jonah says. “Even if it was well-meant.”

“And then Dina was the one who came up with the whole name thing, so really, that’s the only thing that’s changed. And what we’re allowed to wrap the present in,” she says. “It’s still Secret Santa in literally every other way, so, really we should be apologizing to you.”

“I’m the lone Jew in a store that has a quarter of an aisle dedicated to Chanukah while the rest of the store has been decorated like the inside of Santa’s workshop,” Jonah says. “Apologizing that a gift exchange is named after him is kind of beside the point.” He busies himself re-sizing a rack of baby socks. “It was worse when I was a kid and they were still allowed to do Christmas stuff in school, and then it felt compulsory. It’s gotten a lot more crass since then, but at least nobody’s making me hang garland on my desk.”

“Just the register. And every other aisle. And the bathroom door,” Amy says.

“Yeah, that’s not so cool,” he says. “But gross over-commercialization and cultural saturation really beats everything else into submission, I guess.” He pauses. “Glenn didn’t want to exclude anybody, but we’ve got three Jehovah’s Witnesses on staff, too, at least one Buddhist. Brett told me once he grew up in a Zoroastrian church, but he might have been messing with me.”

“Yeah, he does that,” Amy says. “Two years ago he told me he’s a practicing Wiccan. Glenn told me a while ago he experienced a ‘mystical moment of clarity’ after the tornado, but I’m not sure it took. Even if we cancelled the non-holiday party, we’re still spending every day in the middle of—what’d you call it? Crass over— ”

“Gross over-commercialization,” he says. “That’s living in America.” Jonah pushes the socks into line and lets his hands drop to his side. He points at her clipboard. “Where am I headed, boss?”

 

_the party’s on, the feeling’s here / that only comes this time of year_

“And it’s the top of the hour, folks, which means: it’s the Cloud 9 Countdown to Christmas! Just four more days of heavenly savings. And with those savings if you want to drop a few coins in my jar right here at the service desk, I am low on vodka.”

Cheyenne glances up towards the sound of Garrett’s announcement. “It’s been tequila for a week,” she tells Amy. “He’s really branching out.”

“Remember last year, when it was a different flavor of Schnapps every week?” Amy asks. She wrinkles her nose. “I don’t know why I remember that.”

They’re shoulder to shoulder at the jewelry counter, where Cheyenne has spent the majority of her shift separating a tangle of sub-metallic replacement chains that had spilled in transit and fused into a single ball. Amy’s cleaning the few she’s managed to extricate and reboxing them. Somehow, demand for necklace chains soars in the last days before Christmas.

“Maybe you’re just feeling nostalgic because of how it was your last Christmas as a family,” Cheyenne says. “Because of how now you’re divorced.”

Amy makes a non-committal noise in response. Cheyenne steps out of the kiosk for a bathroom break, and Amy thinks about what she’s said.

She might feel better about herself if she _were_  feeling nostalgic, she thinks, but she’s not bothered much about the loss of a family Christmas. Adam has Emma for Christmas morning, which has always been more his thing anyway, the whole production of breakfast and presents and turning the living room into chaos. Amy had always handled the logistics—filling the stockings, taking the photos, picking up the debris after the frenzy of unwrapping ended. She’ll have the morning to herself before taking Emma to her parents’ for an early dinner. It’ll be weird, but she’s not sad so much as tired.  

Adam has Emma most of the week, with Amy’s hours being all over the place. After the divorce, neither of them had really wanted to move or displace Emma too much, but financially neither one of them could keep the house on their own. They’d each ended up downsizing to apartments in complexes near each other. Emma can walk from one to the other easily, which Amy’s starting to think is not necessarily the best option for a teenager prone to fits of stalking out of a room to slam a door. There’s not much stopping her from tantruming right out of one parent’s home to the other, but Amy thinks she has at least the advantage of a two bedroom place, while Adam’s limited to a one bedroom with an Emma Sleeping Nook. Nights Adam has Emma, Amy always feels slightly off-kilter. She keeps finding herself peeking into Emma’s room, the reflex to check if she’s sleeping or doing her homework so strong it’s depressing when she remembers that her daughter’s not there. She’s not sure she’s looking forward to the party tonight, but she’s not- _not_  looking forward to it.

It’s that, more than the divorce, that’s adding to her holiday-overdose malaise. It’s having come back to Cloud 9 in the fall feeling _relieved_. Even in the midst of slicing her marriage down the middle and moving out of her home and dealing with a daughter suddenly more attitude than personality, returning to the rebuilt store had felt _good_.

She was luckier than most of her coworkers that summer. As floor supervisor she’d had the opportunity to keep working during the two months their location was closed for rebuilding. Corporate put her in rotations in stores in the district; she filled in like a substitute teacher, covering gaps in the schedule. It was weird being floor supervisor to people whose names she had to read from the tags on their vests; it was weirder on the days she had to sub in as an associate again.

(They’d moved Dina to the next district over, covering a worker’s comp disability leave while the injured assistant manager recovered and sued the corporation. She double-checked all the investigative work and paper trail. More associates called out sick during Dina’s tenure than in the store’s history. Dina double-checked that, too.)

She worked in Kirkwood, Chesterfield, that ridiculously enormous concierge store touted as the Flagship Cloud 9 for all of St. Louis. She spent a week in the one in the mall, wedged between a Victoria’s Secret and an Auntie Anne’s. The confusion of smells and the fluorescent lights left her feeling hungover and tired not even a half hour into her shift.

She’d been happy to have a job still. Mostly. She’d find herself lost doing go-backs, unused to the individual differences across stores. She’d been working at her location for over a decade. She knew the rhythms and idiosyncrasies there. She knew Glenn, how to get around him and how to work with him; she knew Dina and how to stay out of her way. There were 60 people in her store on any given day, and she always knew where they’d be. The associates at the other stores were nice, generally, innocuous. They came in and worked and went home and nothing really happened in between. It was normal. It was… fine.

It felt a lot like how things had been before Jonah showed up in her store.

Jonah and his stupid moments of beauty, or whatever.

She had been like that, too. Every day, in and out. Go-backs, soft lines, zones. Shift assignments, lunch breaks, all-hands meetings. Putting up the seasonal decorations, taking them down. Inventory. Endless, endless inventory. Color wars and the Wellness Fair and the yearly lost-and-found lottery. Cycles of unbroken sameness that were simultaneously maddening and comforting in their reliability. And then Jonah. Dares and pranks and field trips and so much stupid hipster crap. But also someone to talk to, someone who listens. Someone who tells her to put herself first.

No one, not once in her life, had ever told her she could do that. Until Jonah.

And they came back home, all of them, and it hadn’t really been that long. Two months in the long run isn’t much—eight weeks, eight payroll cycles. Just one major overhaul of the seasonal aisle. But on that first day back, everything almost exactly as it was—newer, sure, and unfinished, like a weird warped mirror with a bad finish—and Amy realized how much she’d missed them. Whatever it says about her, she knows this now, this is her place and these people she works with, with the, just, _everything_  about them, they are her people. (People she does, without hesitation sometimes, want to murder straight up, but that’s family.) She’d felt more like herself walking back into this store two months ago than she had in ages.

And it _sucked_.

She’d looked forward to coming back to work—she’d looked forward to being some place where things happened. She couldn’t quite understand how Cloud 9 had become that place, how she’d become so complacent. Hadn’t she spent the last ten years, the last fifteen years, even, wanting more? Thinking this was a good job, not a perfect job, but that she had her eye on a way out, always. She’d had a plan, and she’d made at least a little headway in getting her college degree before things went from boring to bad with Adam. Then the cost of classes on top of all the fees and money spent on the divorce, the move, gas for driving all over the district, Emma’s orthodontia. The maintenance of being a blonde. And then the semester had started and she hadn’t gotten her course selection in on time, and even if it feels like the holiday season in the store is literally never, ever going to end, it will, and spring semester deadlines are right around the corner.

Cheyenne’s been gone long enough for Amy to get so lost in thought she doesn’t hear her name the first few times on the PA.

“IF AMY DUBANOWSKI WOULD LIKE TO GRACE THE WRAPPING STATION WITH HER PRESENCE I’D CONSIDER THAT A NON-SECULAR WINTER OCCASION MIRACLE.”

Amy half-jogs across the store, an idea forming as she goes for the upcoming gift-exchange.

 

_love choir of children sing their song_

“Starting tomorrow, just one more day of heavenly savings. And that’s tonight’s last Cloud 9 Countdown to Christmas, shoppers, because this location is officially closed until Christmas Eve. Also because I am not a little bit drunk. So as the innkeeper said to Joseph and Mary, get lost.”

Amy looks over at Garrett from the returns register, slashing her finger across her throat.

“I’m sorry, that was inappropriate,” he says, still leaning on the broadcast button. “But unless you’re here for the party, if you don’t leave now, I’m pretty sure our boss Amy’s gonna kill you.”

The party’s proximity to Christmas rather belies its entire non-secular premise, Amy thinks. It’s also pretty much a red-and-green extravaganza, with decorations scrounged from the returns and damages bin, the food an assortment of their usual potluck fare and an enormous amount of Christmas cookies. Amy’s helping herself to a glass of punch when Jonah sidles up to her.

“I think that punch is spiked,” he says.

She raises her glass. “Here’s hoping.”

He rocks back on his heels. “So this is pretty much a Christmas party, huh?”

“Pretty much,” she says.

“At least they _tried_ ,” Jonah says. “I like the blue balloons.”

“They say ‘welcome baby boy,’ Jonah.”

“Then they are also on theme,” he says.

“He wanted to include a menorah, but I figured if it’s not really appropriate to wish someone a happy Chanukah after it ends, probably the same goes for putting out a fully lit menorah. Even if it’s plastic and the lights are LED.”

He glances down at her. “What, did you do a google?”

“I did a google,” she says.

“Thanks.”

She pours him a cup of punch, hands it to him, and taps her plastic glass to his. “Cheers to a non-secular winter party.”

She’s spent more on the gift that she wanted to, or thinks she should have, and the only one they had left in stock had Star Wars symbols etched into the cover. But it’s a proper Moleskin, and there’s something completely Jonah about a notebook edging on pretension _and_  dorkiness. She wrapped it with scraps from the gift-wrap station, so it’s a patchwork of white and silver and gold paper, a haphazard purple bow hiding a particularly exposed seam. Glenn hands out the gifts, reminding everyone not to open until they’ve all been distributed. By the time he gets to Amy, people have mostly ripped in and are issuing either genuinely enthusiastic gratitude or awkward acceptance.

She barely has the wrapping off before Dina’s at her elbow. “I really wanted to get you a gun,” she says, “but the price limit made it impossible, so: mace.”

Amy holds the small canister in her hand, turning it over a few times. “That’s very thoughtful of you.”

“Well, you live alone now,” Dina says. “I would suggest sleeping with it under your pillow but honestly I learned the hard way that can be more hazardous to your health than an intruder.” She claps Amy on the shoulder. “I’ve seen you fire a gun, so I know you can handle yourself, but that’s not a joke. That’s a real weapon there.”

Amy’s already wondering where she can hide it from Emma. “Thank you, Dina.”

“So, who’d you get?”

Amy glances around the room. She’s glad she doesn’t see him; she didn’t want to notice his reaction when he opened his gift. “Jonah,” she says.

Things get weird after the gifts are open. The party spills from the break room onto the sales floor, as it always does. The lights have already gone down, but there’s still that ever-present hum the store produces from somewhere. Glenn’s made arrangements with corporate to keep them from being locked in again, so they can linger without feeling more trapped than usual. Someone turns on the music, the same corporate satellite feed they’ve been hearing for weeks on end. Mateo turns guessing the next song in rotation into a drinking game, which is really just him getting people to take shots until Sandra ruins the game by remembering the play order, forcing Mateo to take shots, which leads to both of them crying under the express lane counter. Miles and Lisa are locked in the photo lab, at the door of which Marcus and Garrett have set up a bowling game using sticks of deodorant as pins and oranges as balls, both for bowling and tripping up the love birds when they eventually emerge. Amy’s on her third cup of punch and seriously contemplating letting Cheyenne ombre her hair.

It’s been this way as long as Amy can remember—people trade gifts, argue, hook up, cry, drink way too much way too fast before they have to leave—every weird party-in-decline cliche possible starts happening simultaneously until someone finds the airhorn. Usually Dina.

Cheyenne is fairly swaying on her feet, and Amy has just enough wherewithal to think this isn’t the best time to let her attempt painting Amy’s hair with chemicals. They get the giggles as they box up the supplies again, and Amy looks around her—it feels like everyone she knows is here, dancing and shouting in the dimness of the half-lit store, everything shimmering with the holiday decorations and Amy’s alcohol buzz. She feels something in her chest, something tight and hard and sweet that makes her eyes sting, and she slides off the cosmetics counter with wobbly purpose.

It’s eerie between the aisles, away from the rest of the party. The music seems louder even as the songs are blurring pleasantly together, like she’s not really hearing them. It’s drafty the further back she goes, the slight breeze that’s omnipresent in this part of the store cool against her booze-flushed cheeks.

She finds Jonah in the book and magazine aisle. It’s 80% magazines, 15% adult coloring books, and 5% romance novels with luridly illustrated covers. (Amy has read them all. She borrows them one at time, and when she’s worked her way through the meagre inventory, she starts back at the beginning. Sometimes they’re bought up and she gets a new novel, but mostly she reads the same five novels in rotation during her breaks and in dull moments on Wednesdays.) He’s holding his gift to his chest, studying the titles on display.

“ _A Duchess’s Dilemma_  is a good one if you’re looking for a recommendation,” she says.

Jonah looks up, startled. “Hi,” he says.

“Hi.”

He taps his fingers against the back of the notebook he’s holding. “I, uh—I wanted to—I mean, I didn’t get you—”

Amy rolls her eyes before she can catch herself. “I pulled your name out of the hat,” she says. “I’m not expecting—”

“Thank you,” he says. He gestures with the notebook. “Kinda had my eye on it, actually.”

“Good,” she says. “I’m glad you like it.” She edges closer to the merch display where he stands. “Dina got me mace.”

“That’s… very Dina,” he says.

“Yeah.”

They stand there a moment, not meeting each other’s eyes.

“An existential crisis, huh?” Jonah says.

Amy winces. “I honestly don’t know if I was hoping you’d read that or not,” she says. “At least, not immediately.”

She’d had to remove the cellophane to write the inscription. Part of her flinched at taking off the plastic, thinking it’s part of the whole allure of a fancy journal. But she’d wanted to say something, and she wasn’t sure how else to do it.

She kept it short. _Jonah_ , she’d written, _I think I’m having an existential crisis._  She’d stared then at the rest of the page, willing it to inspire her with _something_. Instead, she’d signed her name at the bottom, and as an afterthought, scribbled, _so that’s happening. Good Non-Secular Winter Occasion to you._

“Do you want to talk about it?” Jonah asks.

“Yes,” Amy says. “No. I mean—yes, I think. Eventually.” She shakes her head. “I didn’t mean to make your present all about me, or anything, I just… I thought if anyone could understand…”

“It’d be the guy who dropped out of school and drove to a new state and got a new job all in one day?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she says. “I know I shouldn’t complain, or anything—I had work this summer, I could pay rent, but I was— even with everything happening with Adam and moving and everything, God, Jonah, I was so bored,” she says. “I didn’t have anybody to talk to.”

He takes a step closer. “Me neither,” he says.

“I’m sorry about your apartment,” she tells him. “I don’t think I’ve said that.”

“It’s not a big deal,” he says.

“It is, though,” she says. He takes another step, and Amy’s suddenly terrified he’s going to try to kiss her. Everything is riding too high in her chest; her skin feels tight and there’s something fluttering just beneath that feels _too much._  “Um, the book aisle,” she says.

There’s a shift in his expression; he’s been studying her, whatever he’s thinking unreadable in the dim light and serious, intense set of his brow. Jonah, transparent as saran wrap, for a half a second is completely inscrutable before it all snaps back and he’s easy again, just Jonah.

“I thought maybe there’d be something for an existential crisis,” he says. “Chicken Soup for the Retail Soul, or something.”

Amy smiles. “That’s basically what the romance novels are for,” she says. “I don’t need a self-help book, I just need… to figure out the next thing, I guess.”

“The next thing,” he says. “After... Adam?”

It’s the first time he’s asked in a while. “Not necessarily.”

“What about school?” he says. “When I got here you were taking classes, and then you stopped talking about it, but…”

“But?”

He sighs. “Who am I to ask someone why they gave up on school?” he says.

“I didn’t give up,” Amy insists, “I just…” Jonah waits. “When I started going, it was for my family. And if I’m not doing it for them, I don’t know why I’m doing it.”

“Can’t you want to do it for you?” Jonah asks. “You’re always doing things for other people, Amy. You’re allowed to want to do something for yourself. And not to sound too self-helpy, or anything—”

“Has that ever stopped you?” she asks.

“—but you had Emma so young, and you didn’t get to have that time that people have where they, you know, screw around. Do things for the sake of doing them. Just… figure out who you are. Not that you don’t know who you are, you’re— I just mean, you’re entitled to time to figure out what you want and how you want to get it. Outside this store.”

Amy ducks her head. “It’s just that—when I’m here, I know what to do. I know where my place is. I’m… important,” she says, a self-conscious laugh stuck in her throat. “I don’t even know what I want my major to be when I finish all the gen ed requirements, and I just don’t want to waste time and money on something that might not lead to anything when this place is here and it’s—it’s enough.”

“Is it, though?” Jonah asks. “I mean, I know we have fun—or I think we do, sometimes—but, Amy, if you want more, you can’t not go after that because it might not work out.” He crosses his arms again over the notebook still clutched to his chest. “I failed. It’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. And you’re _Amy_.”

“Meaning, what, exactly?”

“You’re stronger than I am—you’re the toughest person I know.”

Amy looks away, shaking her head a little. “Are you going to call me sexy now, too?”

Jonah laughs. Even in the dim light, Amy can see the flush rise in his cheeks at that. “I’m just saying—this place is always going to be here. And you’re important, wherever you are. You don’t have to go to school for anyone. You can just… go.”

It’s a very Jonah thing to say, she thinks. And to believe, for all that. They stand a moment, and the silence between them lasts a half a beat too long not to be awkward. Amy’s about to suggest going back to the party; if past experience is reliable, and it generally is, they’re about to get to the moment Glenn starts singing “What Are You Doin’ New Years’” to one of the inflatable reindeer.

“Amy?”

“Yes, Jonah?” she sighs.

“I’m not part of your existential crisis, am I?” he asks. “The… thing… we don’t talk about. From the tornado.”

She pulls a face like she’s considering it. “Not—not in that way,” she says.

“But in some way?”

“Only in that working with you has led me to use the words ‘existential crisis’ unironically,” she says. “And… you make the job a little easier. Sometimes. When you’re not actively—”  

“Wait,” he says, suddenly grinning, and Jonah reaches out a hand to her, his eyes bright.

In that instant, Amy can’t move, or breathe, or think, but his hand is closing over her wrist and he’s dragging her in a quick walk down the aisle. She’s stumbling after him, a little dizzy, her throat confusingly tight, as he talks over his shoulder.

“I have an idea,” he says.

They skid to a stop in the school supply aisle, and Jonah keeps his hand clasped around her wrist as his eyes rake the shelves. When they light on whatever it is he’s looking for, he lets go, and Amy finds herself closing her own hand over the same spot, her one hand cool against the skin of the other.

He reaches for something on a lower shelf and turns to hand it to Amy. She runs her hand along the plastic cover, thumbs the fringe of tabs along the side.

“It’s not a fancy journal,” he says, “but it’s an undated day planner.”

“I can see that, Jonah,” she says slowly.

“It’s for planning,” he says.

“No, I know what a planner’s for, Jonah, I—”

He takes it back and peels the sticker off. “I’m gonna pay for this,” he says. “It’s my non-secular winter celebration gift to you. For planning the next thing.”

Glenn’s voice stutters over the speaker, startling them both.

_“Maybe it’s much too early in the game…”_

Amy laughs, surprising herself this time. “This is something you have to see,” she tells him. “Trust me.”

They turn towards the front of the store, and Amy realizes she’s hugging the planner to her chest just as Jonah’s been doing with his new journal.

“Thank you for the planner,” she says. “I do like making lists.”

“I’ve been reading about bullet journalling, and—”

“No,” Amy says.

“You say that now, but—”

Amy rolls her eyes and reaches out, circling her hand around his wrist. “Just… listen to the non-secular winter song,” she says. “It’ll change your life.”

Jonah smiles at the tableau laid out at the front of the store, Glenn with his arm around a reindeer, the assembled staff swaying and holding aloft LED-lit candles to the off-key crooning of their manager.

“I expect nothing less from this place,” he says.

Amy tightens her hand on Jonah’s wrist before sliding her palm flush against his, squeezing his hand just slightly. Jonah holds on and doesn’t let go.


End file.
